Long Overdue Developments Generate Great Possibilities

Sat., Nov. 7, 1998

Angie Peltzer Special To Opinion

Let me tell you about Annie. Annie is a fiery grandmother of 14 and a mother of seven, with a jubilant laugh and a contagious smile. Around Annie’s neck is a gold medallion. She’s worn this medallion every day of her life, every day since the people pictured on the medallion - first her son and then her granddaughter - were killed in the atrocities of Northern Ireland.

Beneath the laughter and smiles is a strong woman not afraid to confront the paramilitary groups day after day in her working class neighborhood, successfully keeping the neighborhood children from their deadly grasp.

Don’t feel sorry for Annie, though. She’ll tell you convincingly: “I feel fantastic!” Annie was only one of the hundreds of fascinating women from Northern Ireland I recently met while at the U.S. State Department’s Vital Voices Conference in Belfast. The conference brought together women of all ages, religions and occupations from the local, national and international level.

One aim of the conference was to create partnerships with the women of Northern Ireland to ensure that their voices are heard in the new Northern Ireland Assembly and Belfast Agreement. It was the most amazing experience of my life. I was able to meet the players in the Northern Ireland peace process. And the women at the conference were some of the most amazing women I have ever met, such as the daughter of the president of Nigeria, who had both of her parents murdered because of their fight for democracy.

The conference opened my eyes to a world full of possibilities as I talked with women I had only read about, ate dinner with political leaders responsible for the historic peace process and drank with the young women who will contribute to its culmination.

A few months ago, the peace process seemed only as close as the latest television report. Now, I hope to directly contribute by bringing American interns to the integrated schools of Northern Ireland. Those schools are not state-funded because Catholics and Protestants are integrated. I hope we American interns can teach peer mediation skills to the students. It is an extraordinary feeling to actually contribute to the emergence of peace, especially when it is 800 years overdue.

In the words of Annie, “I feel fantastic!”

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